Advertisement

Advertisement

Sloshing sea may make Neptune’s moon Triton habitable

What is surging below Triton’s tough exterior?

(Image: NASA)

TRITON is really stirring things up.

Neptune’s largest moon may have a turbulent ocean under its icy crust, driving geologic activity. If so, the mix of liquid water and an ability to cycle nutrients within it hints that Triton has at least some of the ingredients needed to spark life.

Triton has an unusually smooth surface and shows signs of geysers and ice volcanoes, suggesting its icy crust is active. But it is too far away from the sun for our star to be providing enough heat for these features.

Advertisement

Triton is thought to be a former neighbour of Pluto, captured long ago by Neptune’s gravity. Getting snared would have put the moon under intense gravitational forces, says Francis Nimmo at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the heat would have been more than enough to melt the ice.

If the moon kept some internal heat, it may support a liquid ocean underneath its icy shell. Nimmo and John Spencer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, modelled what such an ocean might be like now (Icarus, doi.org/rgc). Triton is significantly tilted with respect to Neptune, so that the planet squeezes and stretches the moon as it orbits. That could be driving turbulence in the ocean, the pair says, producing enough heat to set the ice above it in motion.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Sloshing sea may heat wonky moon”